HEDGE-SPARROW. See Sparrow.
HEEM, Jan Davidsz van (or Johannes de), was born according to Houbraken and Sandrart in 1604, according to Descamps in 1600, at Utrecht, and died at Antwerp in 1683 or 1684. Thoré has said of Heda, but it is only true of De Heem, that “he glorified insects, butterflies, and all the minute beings that swarm in vegetation, and made the moth drink in cups of chased gold.” He was, if not the first, certainly the greatest painter of still life in Holland ; no artist of his class combined more successfully perfect reality of form and colour with brilliancy and harmony of tints. No object of stone or silver, no flower humble or gorgeous, no fruit of Europe or the tropics, no twig or leaf, with which he was not familiar. Sometimes he merely represented a festoon or a nosegay. More frequently he worked with a purpose to point a moral or illustrate a motto. Here the snake lies coiled under the grass, there a skull rests on blooming plants. Gold and silver tankards or cups suggest the vanity of earthly possessions ; salvation is allegorized in a chalice amidst blossoms, death as a crucifix inside a wreath. Sometimes De Heem painted alone, sometimes in company with men of his school, Madonnas or portraits surrounded by festoons of fruit or flowers. At one time he signed with initials, at others with Johannes, at others again with the name of his father joined to his own. At rare intervals he condescended to a date, and when he did the work was certainly of the best. De Heem entered the guild of Antwerp in 1635-6, and became a burgher of that city in 1637. He steadily maintained his residence till 1667, when he moved to Utrecht, where traces of his presence are preserved in records of 1668, 1669, and 1670. It is not known when he finally returned to Antwerp, but his death is recorded in the guild books of that place. A very early picture, dated 1628, in the gallery of Gotha, bearing the signature of Johannes in full, shows that De Heem at that time was familiar with the techuical habits of execution peculiar to the youth of Albert Cuyp. In later years he completely shook off dependence, and appears in all the vigour of his own originality.
Out of 100 pictures or more to be met with in European galleries searcely eighteen are dated. The earliest after that of Gotha is a chased tankard, with a bottle, a silver cup, and a lemon on a marble table, dated 1640, in the museum of Amsterdam. <A similar work of 1645, with the addition of fruit and flowers and a distant landscape, is in Lord Radnor’s collection at Longford. A chalice in a wreath, with the radiant host amidst wheatsheaves, grapes, and flowers, is a masterpicce of 1648 in the Belvedere of Vienna. A wreath round a Madonna of life size, dated 1650, in the museum of Berlin, shows that De Heem could paint brightly and harmoniously on a large seale. In the Pinakothek at Munich is the celebrated composition of 1653, in which creepers, beauti- fully commingled with gourds and blackberries, twigs of orange, myrtle, and peach, are eniivened by butterflies, moths, and beetles. A landscape with a blooming rose tree, a jug of strawberries, a selection of fruit, and_a marble bust of Pan, dated 1655, is in the Hermitage at St Petersburg; an allegory of abundance in a medallion wreathed with fruit and flowers, in the gallery of Brussels, is inscribed with De Heem’s monogram, the date of 1668, and the name of an obscure artist ealled Lambrechts. All these pieces exhibit the master in full possession of his artistic faculties.
Cornelius de Heem, the son of Johannes, was in practice as a flower painter at Utrecht in 1658, and was still active in his profes- sion in 1671 at the Hague. His pictures are not equal to those of his sire, but they are all well authenticated, and most of them in the galleries of the Hague, Dresden, Cassel, Vienna, and Berlin. In the Staedel at Frankfort is a fruit piece, with pot-herbs and a porcelain jug, dated 1658 ; another, dated 1671, is in the museum of Brussels. David de Heem, another member of the family, entered the guild of Utrecht in 1668 and that of Antwerp in 1698, The best piece assigned to him is a table with a lobster, fruit, and glasses, in the gallery of Amsterdam ; others bear his sionature in the museums of Florence, St Petersburg, and Brunswick. It is well to guard against the fallacy that David de Heem above mentioned is the father of Jan de Heem. We should also be careful not to make two persons of the artist who sometimes signs Johannes, sometimes Jan Davidsz or J. D. Heem.
HEEMSKERK, Johan van (1597–1656), Dutch poet, was born at Amsterdam in 1597. He was educated as a child at Bayonne, and entered the university of Leyden in 1617. In 1621 he went abroad on the grand tour, leaving behind him his first volume of poems, Alinnekunst (The Art of Love), which appeared in 1622. He was absent from Holland four years. He was made master of arts at Bourges in 1623, and in 1624 visited Hugo Grotius in Paris. On his return in 1625 he published Afinnepligt (The Duty of Love), and began to practise as an advocate in the Hague. In 1628 he was sent to England in his legal capacity by the Dutch East India Company, to settle the dispute respecting Amboyna. In the same year he published the poem entitled Afinnekunde, or the Science of Love. He proceeded to Amsterdam in 1640, where he married Alida, sister of the eminent statesman Van Beuningen. In 1642 he published Zhe Cid, a tragi- comedy, and in 1647 his most famous work, the pastoral romance of Batavische Arcadia, which he had written ten years before. During the last twelve years of his life Heemskerk sat in the upper chamber of the states-general. His last poetical work was The Inconstant Hylas. He died at Amsterdam on the 27th of February 1656.
The poetry of Heemskirk, which fell into oblivion during the 18th century, is now once more read and valued. He takes a pro- minent place among writers of the second rank in the great age of Dutch literature. But his famous pastoral, the Batavian Arcadia, which was founded on the Astrée of Honoré d’Urfé, enjoyed a greut popularity for more than a century, and passed through twelve editions. It provoked a host of more or less able imitations, of which the most distinguished were the Doortsche Arcadia (1662) of Lambertus Bos, the Zaanlandsche Arcadia (1658) of Hendrik Zooteboom, and the Rotterdamsche Arcadia (1708) of Willem den Elger. But the original work of Heemskerk, in which a party of nymphs and shepherds go out from the Hague to Katwijk, and there indulge in polite and pastoral discourse, surpasses all these in brightness and versatility.
